In "After 40 Years, Has the Grand Experiment Failed?" Trum Simmons answers the question he poses in the essay's title by describing a community college teaching career that many "Teaching English in the Two-Year College" (TETYC) readers will find familiar: the diversity of community college students; student success and failure; conflicted…

Dr. Richard Sagor is the Educational Leadership Program Director and a professor in the Department of Education at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Howard Tinberg is a professor of English at Bristol Community College in Fall River, Massachusetts, where he is also director of the Writing Lab. He is the editor of the journal "Teaching…

This article opens with statements excerpted from reports written by the MLA Committee on Community Colleges. These statements present an accurate description of the work of community college faculty: teaching (face-to-face and online), and a commitment to student learning form the basis of the community college mission. Faculty are recognized…

For five years, the author has been advocating a writing program administrator (WPA) position at his two-year college. While the vice president of instruction has been sympathetic, the issue has been funding. As a means to prepare and to justify the WPA's continuing existence, he has set to work mapping out the terrain, trying to anticipate the…

In 2005, supported by a Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Research Initiative Grant and Two-Year College English Association (TYCA) volunteers, the TYCA Research Initiative Committee distributed the first national survey of two-year college writing programs. This online survey explored two-year college programs and…

Learning communities are common on two- and four-year college campuses. Estimates suggest that they exist on four to five hundred campuses and can be found in most states. Such numbers signal that interest in learning communities is going strong, and there are indications that on two-year college campuses, interest continues to grow. As…

In 2005, supported by a CCCC's Research Initiative Grant and TYCA volunteers, the TYCA Research Initiative Committee distributed the first national survey of two-year college writing programs. This online survey explored two-year college programs and satisfaction within four areas identified in the CCCC grant proposal: (1) Assessment; (2)…

The relevance of English as a Second Language (ESL) courses to the "real world" of college writing is an ongoing issue for those who teach ESL. Ideally, ESL composition classes should help students make connections between what they learn about writing and the ways they might need to write later on in their academic careers. Unfortunately, as with…

In this latest in a series of commentaries from former chairs of the national Two-Year College English Association (TYCA), the author, TYCA chair (2004-2006) and the 2009 winner of the Nell Ann Pickett Service Award, shares her views on becoming involved in local, regional, and national professional activities. Her time in national leadership gave…

Multimodal writing is considered as a "new" way of composing, or, somewhat cynically, as a strategy for adding relevance or interest to a required composition course. Jody Shipka's "A Multimodal Task-Based Framework for Composing" suggests that "students' uptakes of a much wider, richer repertoire of semiotic resources, coupled with their efforts…

Notwithstanding variation in institutional missions, two-year colleges are the gateway to postsecondary education for the majority of college and university students in this country. As institutions of choice for many and institutions of necessity for others, two-year institutions are constantly challenged to meet the rapidly changing needs of…

Veterans make up a fair number of potential students. It is important to understand them, even if teachers do not agree with the politics of the War on Terror, Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), or Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). In working with the veterans at Black Hawk College and other two-year and four-year institutions, the author has learned…

Given the demographic differences among two-year colleges and four-year universities and the relatively limited access to health education and campus-based health resources, this study compares the frequency of limiting dietary fat intake and exercising among two- and four-year college students. A total of 2,265 undergraduate students aged 18-25…

According to the author, the Association for Business Communication (ABC), the premiere professional organization for those who teach business communication, has long neglected and marginalized those who teach at two-year colleges, as has the discipline of business communications as a whole. The best method to determine how ABC could better meet…

The nature of teaching requires reflection for anyone (students or teacher) to learn anything at all, especially in the community-college classroom, where students often come because traditional teaching methods simply haven't served their needs. As all teacher-scholars know, stand and deliver simply does not work for most of them. They do have to…